Where is the glory? What does this say about the nature of conflict and cost to country, life, and liberty? Plenty. Awash in terrific extras typical of the Criterion challenge, Overlord is no exception when taken as a whole. This crafty film with support material is solid and leaves an indelible mark in annals of WW II history.

Take this stroll down a lazy country lane into the legions of some unknown hell. Not likely to leave you anytime soon, Stuart Cooper and cohorts spent years in research to present this singular telling in 1975. Revived in 2007 it couldn’t look better. War buffs will drool. Film noir freaks will clamor.

I wouldn’t say that it’s about the futility of war. The war is undesirable, everyone in the film hates it, but then nobody would ever claim that war is a good idea or desirable. Like Kurt Vonnegut says in Slaughterhouse 5, you might as well write an anti-glacier book as an anti-war book. I think this film gets its strength from not getting tangled up in that sort of straightforward agitprop.

For me it was really about what is might have been like for someone like me to have been in that war. I have always wondered about that, and I think I have more of an idea now than I did before. Tom is weirdly disconnected from everything around him, almost like Meursault in The Outsider, but I can really see how one might react like that faced with the brutal, crushing world of military training.

Most of all I found this film incredibly moving, I hardly knew why it affected me so much. The emotion, the sense of tragedy just built and built all the way through and has stayed with me afterwards. It is really worth watching.

Thanks again!

Colin - I hope you enjoyed the film!

You’re probably right about Homer, but I don’t think that excuses it as a great work of literature. It’s not purely dumb entertainment or propaganda, which is primarily what separates it from all the bad war films of the last century. It’s enduring for a reason.

It seems that “based on true events” goes well beyond war films, though, doesn’t it? I think we Americans are a bit plagued by this idea of really real true stories. Generally, I’m pretty ambivalent, but I’m not drawn to simplistic heroism.

Oh, I saw “Colonel Blimp” a while back, which oddly covered one of the major themes in “Patton,” basically the changes in modern warfare since WWI. Didn’t like it as much, but it’s a great portrait of a completely fictional military officer.

Historically speaking, I actually think Lawrence of Arabia actually does a pretty decent job of portraying T. E. Lawrence and the events it lays out with plenty of cinematic excess of course. I do find Lawrence to be a much more interesting, likable and fascinating character compared to Patton, so I’m sure that colors my view of both films as well.

I’d fault Homer (who often wanted to glorify war), but not Dickens who was using war as a backdrop to tell what I thought was a very even handed and thoughtful story, espically considering when it was written.

What I find most repulsive is modern films that claim to be “based on historic facts” and they go out of their way to stress their “realism” and “historical” importance, but are really just pro-America, pro-war propaganda made by modern directors that should know better by now.

Spielberg and his Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers are both great example of the kind of modern war cinema that I loathe along with stuff like Michael Bay’s horrible Pearl Harbor.

I enjoy chatting about films so no worries about the lengthy discussion! ;)

I agree with some of what you’re saying about war films. It’s never been a genre that’s held much interest, excluding films that are marginally considered war films, like Patton or Lawrence of Arabia.
But I don’t think any film, excluding documentaries of course, based on history or biography can claim total accuracy. It’s all fiction and mythology. Would you fault Homer for bringing gods into the Trojan War? Or Dickens for making up characters who participate in the French Revolution?

Ack! I appear to be in the mood for lengthy discussions this morning. ;)

My jab wasn’t at George C. Scott specifically, it was more of a jab at the typical macho heroes that often walk through a lot of war films and have become part of the American myths about war, soldiers, masculinity and the bizarre notions of what a hero is.

I thought Patton was okay, but overall I think it’s an overrated film. I do like Scott the actor a lot and think he’s very good with the material he’s working with, but the film makes Patton larger than life and the rest of the cast seems lifeless. The movie is really more about the myth of Patton instead of the actual man himself and the script is loaded with pro-America rhetoric with not much else to balance it out.

I love fantasy films and fiction, but I get a little annoyed when filmmakers turn history into fantasy and fiction. War is an especially nasty area to mess around with and so many filmmakers inject fantasy into war films. It’s kind of shocking to me that movies like Flyboys can get made today and I recently watched the critically acclaimed Saving Private Ryan which I thought was just horrible and filled with leftover cliché’s from the 1940s and 50s.

Compared to Saving Private Ryan, Patton is pretty good stuff.

I notice the jab at George C. Scott, presumably for “Patton.” What do you think of the film?

Nice review, Kimberley.

Thankfully once in awhile I come across a great film like Overlord that really knocks my socks off. I wish I could have articulated why I liked the film a bit better, but I wanted to say something about it since the movie really impressed me.

The screenshots a took speak volumes though!